Monday, November 15, 2010

10 Actual books written by fictional TV characters

The Boy Ain’t Right and Hank Hill’s WD-40 For The Soul by Hank Hill

One of the easiest ways to write a book in the voice of a TV character is to cram just under 100 pages full of aphorisms that vaguely fit within the character’s voice. That’s the case with both books by cartoon character Hank Hill, though his “voice” in the books sounds less like the authentically Texan one created by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels, and more like the voice of a hack comedy writer living in an underlit studio apartment, someone who’s maybe heard of Texas once or twice. Cranked out in the brief period where King Of The Hill fever nearly rivaled the fever for the show’s time-slot companion The Simpsons, the books aren’t a way to celebrate the show so much as a “Yeah, whatever, Hank Hill” day-to-day calendar.

Brian Griffin’s Guide To Booze, Broads, And The Lost Art Of Being A Man and Stewie’s Guide To World Domination

The love-hate relationship between occasionally evil, occasionally gay baby Stewie and dryly witty dog Brian was the relationship fans of the unkillable cartoon Family Guy responded to most, so when fans proved willing to buy pretty much anything with the show’s characters slapped on it (seriously, the Amazon.com review section for the Brian book consists solely of three five-star reviews featuring variations on “Every Family Guy fan must have it!”), two books that purported to let viewers be more like their cartoon pals were sent to presses. Both books seemed based on interpretations of the characters from before the series returned from the dead, and as to the question of why anyone would want to be like an evil baby or a martini-sipping dog, well, the easy answer is that no one would want to be like Chris or Meg.

The Sopranos Family Cookbook, compiled by Artie Bucco, and Entertaining With The Sopranos by Carmela Soprano

When The Sopranos unexpectedly crossed over from cult series to mainstream hit, HBO proved that while it was better at coming up with groundbreaking TV series than the networks were, it was no better at shamelessly exploiting them. Under the assumption that the series was famous for its many scenes of the characters enjoying delicious-looking Italian food at the restaurant owned by Artie Bucco, the restaurateur’s name was slapped on a generic Italian cookbook with a photo of the cast. Stranger still was the follow-up, a book that assumed people would want to entertain (?) like the Sopranos. The volume was ostensibly written by Carmela, and it came complete with a cover photo of series star Edie Falco grimacing at the camera, as if HBO’s marketing department were holding a gun to her head just out of sight.

Reading Sucks: The Collected Works Of Beavis And Butt-Head

The fact that two sub-literates who loathe complete sentences—MTV’s beyond-underachievers Beavis and Butt-head—managed to land several books on the New York Times’ bestseller list is probably, like, ironic or something. But as Butt-Head says in the introduction to Reading Sucks (which collects the previously published Ensucklopedia, Huh Huh For Hollywood, The Butt-Files, and Chicken Soup For The Butt), “The penis mightier than the sword. That’s what I’ve got. Heh heh heh heh. Writing’s cool.” Although the duo offer little beyond multiple puns on the words “wood” and “monkey,” and endless references to boobs and butts, you will find the occasional nugget of wisdom—which is like a butt-nugget, but for your brain—such as this philosophical “thought question”: “How can I live in a world full of dumbasses without becoming a fartknocker ?”

Bad Twin, by Gary Troup

In the second-season Lost episode “The Long Con,” Hurley discovers a manuscript among the wreckage of Flight 815 that turns out to be the final draft of a mystery novel by a passenger named Gary Troup. Troup was doubly unlucky: Not only did he perish before getting to see his book published (he’s the guy who gets sucked into the engine during the pilot episode), but his girlfriend, Oceanic stewardess Cindy Chandler, survives, and doesn’t seem to miss him much. Even worse, in a fit of pique, Jack burns the last few pages of the manuscript, assuring that no one will ever figure out whodunit. Troup, being a fictional character, probably took little consolation from the fact that his Bad Twin novel was published in the real world in 2006. A mildly engaging but slight read, Bad Twin was picked up by a number of Lost fans who hoped it would contain clues to the show’s many mysteries. Unsurprisingly, they were disappointed. While the novel contains many references to in-universe Lost characters and institutions (the Widmore family, Alvar Hanso, Paik Heavy Industries, and Mr. Cluck’s Chicken Shack all make appearances), the book, its author, and his involvement with such enigmas as the Hanso Foundation and the Valenzetti Equation turned out to be another batch of red herrings.

The Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition by Quark

It seems that whenever the writers of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine were at a loss for a subplot, they’d have prickly Ferengi barkeeper Quark go off on one of his race’s 285 Rules Of Acquisition. The guidelines were never fully listed, though, and that didn’t change when the maddeningly incomplete book, The Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition, was published. Written “by Quark as told to Ira Steven Behr” (one of the show’s runners and writers), the book only comes up with 70 of the aphoristic, ultra-capitalist, and at times misogynistic rules that the latinum-grubbing Ferengi follow like gospel—among them, “Never ask when you can take,” “Anything worth doing is worth doing for money,” and “Females and finances don’t mix.” Behr wound up exploring the Ferengi race in greater depth in Deep Space Nine, and he even managed to turn Quark from a vile stereotype into a sympathetic, three-dimensional character. Too bad Behr couldn’t have made him a more comprehensive author.

Murder, She Wrote series by Jessica Fletcher


Murder, She Wrote wasn’t the first TV vehicle for a detective who was also a mystery writer. The show’s creators, Richard Levinson and William Link, had previously worked on the ill-fated, small-screen adaptation of the Ellery Queen novels. But Murder’s Jessica Fletcher—the curiously busy amateur sleuth from the small town of Cabot Cove, Maine, the undisputed murder capital of the universe—remains American’s most beloved. Played with meddlesome charm by Angela Lansbury, the character became so popular by the late ’80s that real-life author Donald Bain was asked to “co-write” a series of detective novels with the fictional Fletcher—which, of course, starred Fletcher as well. The books lived on after the show was canceled in 1996, and 35 installments of the series have been published to date. The relative freedom of the printed word gave Fletcher the opportunity to solve murders in all sorts of exotic locales, which is a good thing: At this point, Cabot Cove’s surviving population must be down to about a dozen.

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